Here are some practical tips on how to let them work together. (sorry if there are any double, I did'nt have time to read all the stuff here)

First I would recommend to agree to play without those phones. I never made a big issue out of it. But I never played with people who kept looking (more than once or twice) on their phone. Maybe agree to pause and pee and look at phones.

Play a game were cooperation is key to succes, could do the trick. State it up front, and let them feel it if they still don't work together. With a split-up, you could also ask other players to play NPC's (neutral or not).

What I enjoy about GMing today is experiments as flash backs to childhood/background, flashforward to a situation you think is a nice scene, but they never 'consiously' agreed to go for. This is a piece of railroading. Later you can play how it come to this. Think of a situation were you think, how did I wind up here?

Maybe your'e trying to hard. Let them sit in one room and roleplay somewhat. To be honest, I'm not good at this,but I seen some excellent layback GMing, were not a lot happened on storyaccount but lots of freedom to roleplay was given. Another trick is to let them write something of their (close) relationship towards the other PC's.

Here's what I think I'm going to take away from this. I can totally GM other games the way I GM my own. By that, I mean that I can make everything the other players do matter to me. If a player flubs a roll, I can bring up a new wrinkle. If everyone is just hanging around, I can make a big thing happen to mix it up. Above all, I can learn who the characters are and place things in the game to challenge their beliefs, whether or not it's part of a BIG PLOT.

Here's what I think I'm going to take away from this. I can totally GM other games the way I GM my own. By that, I mean that I can make everything the other players do matter to me. If a player flubs a roll, I can bring up a new wrinkle. If everyone is just hanging around, I can make a big thing happen to mix it up. Above all, I can learn who the characters are and place things in the game to challenge their beliefs, whether or not it's part of a BIG PLOT.

I think I have a bit more insight. Thanks.

You'll likely find that, when you stop worrying about it all being part of "a BIG PLOT" it actually ends up spontaneously being part of a BIG PLOT that everybody is interested in.

If a player flubs a roll, I can bring up a new wrinkle. If everyone is just hanging around, I can make a big thing happen to mix it up. Above all, I can learn who the characters are and place things in the game to challenge their beliefs, whether or not it's part of a BIG PLOT.

It sounds like you've pretty much got what you wanted from this thread, but FWIW that's exactly what I did with my WFRP campaign, which was suffering from the same problem you describe in your first post. I wasn't enjoying writing the "plot" and I wanted the players to go off and find their own and they just weren't. Then I came across Apocalypse World, and felt like it would elicit the sort of play I wanted from my players, so I shamelessly stole a bunch of the ideas (particularly the ones that help with the things you mention in that quote) and plugged them in to the game. Since then it's been working much better.

Brief reply to Christoph's aside: right now, I think Josh's problem stems from the #3 thing I mentioned, and we should focus on that. I've been planning to address FATE as a system in one of Erik's current threads about the game, but it keeps taking second place to the other material I'm working on. I'll get there eventually.

Let's not permit whatever hot-button I pushed with my comment to sidetrack this thread.

Best, Ron

Could you give us a link to Eric's post Ron? As I would also like to hear about it.

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